When Gray Monster reader Erica Saathoff's father passed away ten days after his cancer diagnosis, she found herself mourning his loss while inheriting a job she never knew he was doing. Overnight, the wife, mother of three, and special education teacher became the sole caregiver for her mother, who has Alzheimer's.

She's one of us, and she hopes that by sharing what nearly broke her, and what helped her find her footing, someone else might not have to figure it out alone.

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Erica had always been the one people called in a crisis. First-born daughter, first-born granddaughter, union co-president, and teacher — control was her love language. Then, within a span of ten days last October, her father was diagnosed with liver cancer and passed away, and the shape of her life changed entirely.

Her mother, 71, has Alzheimer's. Diagnosed a couple of years prior to her dad’s passing, Erica was aware of her mom’s disease while the extent was still unclear. Her father had been her caretaker, papering over her increasing decline with explanations that sounded plausible until he wasn’t around. When he was gone, Erica, already raising three kids aged 12, 14, and 16, navigating a union negotiation year, with a sibling over two hours away, and living next door to her parents in a small Illinois town, became her mother's sole caregiver overnight.

"Nobody ever tells you that you might have to be the mom to your mom," she says. "Your whole life you're told not to lie to your parents. And with this disease, now I'm saying things to her I never thought I would have to say."

For months, Erica slept at her mother's house, woke at dawn to get her kids to school, shuttled between the two homes all day, cooked dinner for everyone, and watched her mom and her son at high school basketball games three towns away. Her smart kids, whose grades began reflecting the impact of their mom’s absence, went largely unseen. Then one night her 16-year-old looked at her and said, simply: “Mom, I just really miss having you around”.

"What 16-year-old boy tells his mom that?" she says. "That was the turning point."

Erica installed cameras in her mother's home, started sleeping with her Apple Watch on to catch alerts, and negotiated a new rhythm, one that let her come home at night. She hired home health aides three days a week, then every weekday when she returned to teaching in January. She refused to miss Christmas morning at home with her kids and husband. She also insisted her brother take their mother for a weekend basketball tournament out of town.

The hardest lesson caregiving has taught her, and the one she's passed on to her kids, is that control is an illusion. "There are situations you're going to come across where you can't fix it," she told them. "You just have to work through it."

Her mother moved into memory care on January 26th of this year. Erica still visits every day.

"I need her to know I did this for her," she says. "Not to her."

What Helped Erica and What Might Help You

Long-term care insurance. Erica's parents purchased a policy back in 2007 that has been, in her words, "amazing." Most policies include a 90-day elimination period, essentially a waiting window you pay out of pocket, before coverage kicks in. Erica's advice: if your parents have a policy, find it now, read it, and start the clock on that 90-day window as early as you can. Once coverage begins and depending on the plan, it can cover in-home aides, assisted living, and memory care facilities entirely.

Home security cameras. Installing cameras in her mother's home was the easiest, quickest fix that allowed Erica to sleep in her own house again. Paired with her Apple Watch for overnight alerts, it gave her eyes on her mother without being physically present. This proved to be a crucial middle step between full-time in-person caregiving and a memory care facility.

Home health aides. Finding help in a small town can feel impossible, but Erica connected with a local agency she already knew and trusted. Starting with just four hours, three days a week was enough to begin the 90-day insurance window. This window gave her the first real break she'd had since her father died.

FMLA. Erica used the Family and Medical Leave Act to take protected time off from teaching during the most acute period of her father's illness and after his death. If you're employed and caring for a seriously ill parent, know that federal law entitles most full-time workers to up to 12 weeks of unpaid, job-protected leave per year.

Helpful care-focused finds we’ve identified and researched so you don’t have to. 

Hilarity for Charity is doing something rare in the Alzheimer’s space: making people laugh while making sure caregivers for those living with dementia have access to help. Through respite grants, support groups, and more than 500,000 hours of in-home care relief, they’ve turned levity into a form of advocacy.

Through education and action, founders Seth and Lauren Miller Rogen are committed to caring for families impacted by Alzheimer’s disease.

You said it. This week’s submissions.

“My mom, even with significant cognitive decline, still makes the best cookies!”

“I'm what you call an only child with siblings. The weight of it all is too much at times.” 

“​​My dad called to thank me for sharing a book (Raising Hare) with him.”

“Watching my mom mute her high blood sugar alert while continuing to eat chocolate.”

Caregiving has a funny way of unlocking creative capacity. This piece comes from Gray Monster reader and artist Jamie DeAngelo, who crafted it while caring for her father.